>>skepti+pe
Because the "AGI" pursuit is at least as much a faith movement as it is a rational engineering program. If you examine it more deeply, the faith object isn't even the conjectured inevitable AGI, it's exponential growth curves. (That is of course true for startup culture more generally, from which the current AI boom is an outgrowth.) For my money, The Singularity is Near still counts as the ur-text that the true believers will never let go, even though Kurzweil was summarizing earlier belief trends.
It's just a pity that the creepy doomer weirdos so thoroughly squatted the term "rationalist." It would be interesting to see the perspective on these people 100 years hence, or even 50. I don't doubt there will still be remnant believers who end up moderating and sanitizing their beliefs, much like the Seventh Day Adventists or the Mormons.